There’s an old saying that you should never meet your heroes, because when you meet them, you find out that they are less than what you expected them to be. Sometimes we hold people in high esteem because we don’t really know them very well. If we got to know them, we might be rather disappointed.

We may have the idea that Jesus’ disciples were all spiritual heroes/giants. Of course, they did go on to “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) after the resurrection, but before the resurrection, they displayed some real weaknesses. One of them was a disloyal unbeliever, one repeatedly denied that he even knew Jesus, and others show evidence of self-centered arrogance. All of them abandoned Jesus in his hour of need. So they were anything but spiritual giants at this point.

In this section of Luke, Jesus and the disciples had just finished their Passover meal, the Last Supper. As they were reclining at the table, several topics of conversation came up. So I think we can picture this as after supper conversation.

This passage tells us a lot about discipleship. Every follower of Christ is a disciple, so we must take these lessons to heart. We may be more like the disciples here than we care to admit.

Let’s take a look at the text and note some important principles of Christian discipleship.